Episode 111 - The Follow-Up Failure That’s Killing Your Marketing ROI

Marketing is not the problem if your loans are not closing. In this episode, Meredith Olmstead and Danielle Fancher unpack why campaigns fail when sales follow-up falls short. From abandoned applications to speed to lead and revenue opportunities hiding in plain sight, this conversation connects the dots between marketing performance and lending execution.

Key Takeaways:

• 1. Marketing does not fail. Follow up does. Many financial institutions assume they need more leads when results slow down. In reality, the issue is often a breakdown in sales visibility and follow-up. Without structured processes for abandoned applications, clear ownership of leads, and CRM adoption, strong marketing campaigns cannot translate into closed loans.

• 2. Speed to lead is a competitive advantage. Community banks and credit unions compete not only with each other but also with national lenders and dealerships that can close loans the same day. A five or six-day turnaround for consumer loans is no longer acceptable. Immediate acknowledgment, automated follow-up, and clearly communicated expectations are critical to winning business.

• 3. Sales enablement drives measurable revenue. When lending teams are trained, supported, and equipped with automation tools, institutions see direct revenue impact. Even small improvements in follow-up, ancillary product conversations, or mortgage volume can quickly justify the investment in structured sales support.

Transcription:

Meredith Olmstead:

Hi there, I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency. We work exclusively with banks and credit unions. And I am here with our Director of Sales, Danielle Fancher. Say hi, Danielle.

Danielle Fancher:
Hello.

Meredith Olmstead:
So Danielle and I were just talking about a sales call, not really a sales call, but a call that we had yesterday with an existing client where we were reviewing some sales enablement services that we are going to be starting with that client this year in the spring. And we were going through with them all of the benefits of those services and the different departments that we were going to be kicking off those services with. I think we were going through the order of events with them that we were going to be starting services. I think we decided yesterday that we were going to be starting with mortgage team, then we were going to be starting with going onto the consumer lending team, and then I think we were even going to be layering in their business development team to be supporting their sales support.

So Danielle works with our teams to help coach and onboard sales and lending teams into the HubSpot tool, which is a CRM, to help them use that tool to follow up with lending and new account leads. So I was like, "You know what, Danielle, maybe we should hit record and talk a little bit about why this is so important." So that's what we're doing today.

So basically, Danielle said, "I think that's a great idea. Let's talk about why marketing campaigns or why campaigns in general sometimes fail if you don't have sales follow up and why sales enablement or sales enablement support," which is what Danielle does for our clients, "is so incredibly important."
So that's my little intro. So Danielle, what are you seeing basically? This is what we continue to say over and over, but marketing is no longer seasonal. It's going in this loop, we keep talking about this. Where basically campaigns are running all the time and people are coming into them when they're ready now because of their behavior. So it's not like you're just running auto loan campaigns in the spring because people only buy cars in the spring because people buy cars all the time, whenever they need them. So what are you seeing now in terms of the need for sales in incorporating it with marketing campaigns?

Danielle Fancher:
Yeah. So yesterday, I was on a couple of different calls and I am the lending and sales arm of FI GROW Solutions. I tend to pair up with a marketing strategist and we really close the loop between sales and marketing. So on a call yesterday, I had a marketing strategist say, "I think that we just need to start running more digital ads and we need to get more lead capture in place so we can get more loans in the door." And I said, "I don't think that's the problem. I think you're already doing that. I think that we're already doing all the right things in the marketing department, but unfortunately, what's happening is that we are falling short in the follow-up in the lending department."

Meredith Olmstead:
Got it.

Danielle Fancher:
So I know as a lender, that hurts to hear because I'm a lender, and I never wanted to hear that whenever I was managing lending teams. But unfortunately, that is the case a lot of times. So it's very easy to prove or turn on investment whenever you're in lending, whereas it's a little bit more challenging to prove that whenever you're in the marketing department.

So yesterday, on our call with the client that we're going to be working with, it was really nice to be able to get those numbers from them and be able to prove to them, "Hey, once we have visibility and automation and your lending staff trained, this is the type of result that we can see." An additional $80,000 in revenue, an additional $200,000 in revenue. So you have to be able to connect those dots.

Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha. So yeah, it's funny that ... But that is the nice thing, that when you bring in the sales support side of our services, you can close the loop on reporting and you can put real numbers on results. So it's a really nice way to help justify the investment of adding in sales support, which isn't even as much really as our retainer services because it's just we look at it as it's a nice way to make marketing services sticky and help show, "Look, we're bringing all of these leads in, now let's help close the loop with helping your sales teams close those leads and turn them into new accounts and new loans, and then deepen relationships or cross-sell to them other accounts and other products and services, and make your institution their primary financial institution."

So, tell us what, when you go into start working with a client, what are some of the things that you see that are typically where sales support, where lending teams are falling short as marketing leads are coming in?

Danielle Fancher:
So a lot of times, there's no visibility on abandoned loan applications.

Meredith Olmstead:
Okay.

Danielle Fancher:
So what that means is someone's coming in and starting an application and they're walking away from the app and no one's following up to say, "Hey, did you still want to do this auto loan?" Or we're not sending any educational information around the type of product or service that they were interested in. So that's typically the first thing that we like to look at is do you have any visibility on abandoned applications? And if so, what are you doing with those abandoned applications?

I do realize and we realize at FI GROW that you may not have the lending staff in place to follow up on every one of those applications. So what we like to do is we like to create automation. So we like to create a series of emails and create a workflow to where those people are being contacted in real-time from a real person on your team, just automatically, it's all automated, but it appears to be a one-to-one email to them.

Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha.

Danielle Fancher:
Another thing that I like to look at is what the penetration is of your ancillary product sales? So a lot of credit unions and banks are offering gap extended warranty payment protection and that's a really quick way to see a really quick lift in income and revenue streams if you can start to at are we educated around those products and services.

Meredith Olmstead:
Right.

Danielle Fancher:
One of the things that I would always say whenever I coached teams, well, I do coach teams, but whenever I managed teams directly is, "I don't want you to sell anything. I just want you to be so educated on the product and service that if you see that it's a good fit, we can talk about that product and service to the member or customer and let them make the decision." But you can't take that a choice away from them by not talking about the product or service.

Meredith Olmstead:
Right, right.

Danielle Fancher:
So those are two ways that we can see really, really quick, immediate lifts in revenue for the credit union or bank.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, I love that. I love how you always say that good sales is service. And we think about that too, from the FI GROW perspective. We're not trying to give people services they don't need or trying to just make money on anybody. You want to give somebody something that is a good fit for them, authentically makes sense. It's going to make their life better or is going to fill a need that would otherwise maybe be filled by something that wasn't quite as well or in their best interest. So that's really what good sales at a community-based financial institution is doing.

So the other thing too that you always mention is the speed to lead issue and that's a really big one for financial institutions, especially in regional areas because that could be a big differentiator with you when you have local decision making and you are in the area, versus these online banks or online lenders. So how can that really set a credit union or community bank apart?

Danielle Fancher:
Yeah. So that's extremely important because as credit unions and community banks, you are competing with the other 20 credit unions and community banks that are within a five-mile radius of where you're located. So if your lenders are not picking up the phone and following up on these applications in real-time, within hours in my opinion, they're going to go somewhere else. So you have to realize that in this day-and-age, and I've said this so many times, but the younger generations, we can pick up our phone and order a coffee, and just walk in and get it off the counter. We don't have to talk to anyone, we don't have to do anything other than just press a couple buttons and pay on our phone, and that type of service is starting to be expected in the banking industry as well.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Danielle Fancher:
So if your team does not have ... If someone's not picking up the phone, there should at least be an email that is automatically sent that says, "Hey, we received your loan application," with the expectations listed of what is to come.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Danielle Fancher:
"A loan officer will follow up within X amount of time. If you haven't already submitted this, this and this, be prepared to submit this, this and this." So it's extremely important that we are following up very quickly.

We spoke with a client yesterday who said that their timeframe from start of application to the close of application was five or six days and I was dumbfounded to think that they were okay with those numbers. In no way should we be taking six days to close a loan application, especially a credit card or a personal loan.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, those consumer loans, consumer lending applications should be, what, a matter of a half-an-hour, a couple of hours would be your thought?

Danielle Fancher:
Yeah. Yeah, if you think about it, you can go into a car dealership and have no financing in place and close on a loan that same day.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.

Danielle Fancher:
And that's horrible service. So if you're competing with a car dealership and service is top of mind for community banks and credit unions, you should be able to do the same thing in your branches.

Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. It's funny. Our sales enablement services are not even ... Adding in sales enablement services through us are not even $3000 a month. In terms of justifying paying for support to have somebody come in and be coaching and working one-on-one with sales teams, we were looking at those numbers yesterday. Just increasing your loan volume even for one mortgage say a month would cover the cost of sales enablement support for months and years, the total revenue that you would make on increasing the volume by even one mortgage per month. So really, it's not hard to be to justify the investment for this kind of a support if you can come in and move the needle on bringing in a better system and then bringing your lending team all into one CRM under one umbrella, and really coaching them up so that they're doing a little bit better job in this follow up process.

So awesome. Well, this is great stuff. Thank you so much, Danielle. I appreciate you taking some time and chatting with me about this. If you're interested in learning more about digital marketing and sales support for your financial institution, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other blogs, podcasts, case studies, so please join us over there. We would love for you to visit us online. But otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.